Will Smith certainly wasn’t a small-time actor by the time 1997 hit, as he’d starred in the popular NBC series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for six seasons and built some major film cred through Bad Boys and Independence Day. That said, there’s no question that Men in Black played an integral role in cementing him as a Hollywood powerhouse, though that’s not to say he was always game to play Agent J. It actually took convincing from director Steven Spielberg for Smith to agree to join Men in Black, and a helicopter was involved with making it happen.
Although Barry Sonnenfeld was sitting in the director’s chair for Men in Black (and the following two sequels), Spielberg was involved as a producer, and another key behind-the-scenes figure was James Lassiter, the executive music producer and Smith’s longtime business partner. While speaking with comedian Kevin Hart in an upcoming episode of his talk show Hart to Heart, which will premiere to Peacock subscribers on August 3, Smith first explained why he initially wasn’t interested in working on Men in Black:
[James Lassiter] picked Men in Black, I kinda understood Men in Black a little bit, but I didn’t want to make Men in Black. That was the next year after Independence Day, so I didn’t want to make to alien movies back to back.
1996 saw Will Smith starring in Independence Day’s ensemble cast as Captain Steven Hiller, with his notable costars including Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman, among many others. Even ignoring how critically and commercially successful Independence Day was, it’s understandable that Smith didn’t want dive back into the alien pool so soon afterwards at first. However, then Steven Spielberg came along to persuade him otherwise, and it involved sending a helicopter straight to Smith so he could meet with the filmmaker in person. As the actor recalled:
Steven Spielberg sent a helicopter for me. … It landed at his house, and he had me at 'hello.' … And it was the first time I’d ever had lemonade with carbonated water. I was like, ‘This is regular.’ .. He flew me in, and he said the coldest shit. He said, ‘Tell me why you don’t want to make my movie.’ And he’s the producer. And he put the ellipsis at the end, it was the dot, dot, dot. ‘Tell me why you don’t want to make my movie.’ It was the dot, dot, dot. If he had continued, he would’ve said, ‘Joker, you know I made Jaws, right? You know I made E.T.’
At the time Will Smith and Steven Spielberg met, the latter had more than 20 years of major cinematic credits under his belt, so yeah, that “ellipsis” was definitely warranted. Granted, the former still would have been within his rights to turn down Men in Black, but he fortunately changed his mind and agreed to star opposite Tommy Lee Jones as the newest recruit to MIB. All these years later, Agent J remains one of Will Smith’s greatest performances, and he’d go on to reprise the character in 2002’s Men in Black 2 and 2012’s Men in Black 3. Still, I can’t help but wonder how this meeting between Smith and Spielberg had gone if a regular car had been sent rather than a helicopter.
If you’re now interested in revisiting Men in Black, it can be streamed with an Amazon Prime Video subscription. Will Smith’s next movie, Bad Boys 4, is slated for a June 14 drop on the 2024 release schedule.
